Stephen King: The film critic Boulder's Daily Camera didn't hire

Living in Boulder in 1974, the author offered to review movies for the paper

By Matt Sebastian

Staff Writer

Posted:
03/12/2016 04:50:40 PM MST

Updated:
03/15/2016 09:55:48 AM MDT

Stephen King, seen in a promotional photo for the television adaptation of his novel "Under the Dome," wrote to the Daily Camera in 1974 offering to review films for the newspaper. The future bestselling author — a Boulder resident at the time — even included two sample reviews. The paper's editors didn't take him up on that offer. (Courtesy photo)

Read King's letters, reviews

Visit dailycamera.com to read Stephen King's two letters to the Daily Camera, as well as two never-before-published movie reviews he penned as samples of his work.

For more than four decades, writings under the most famous byline the Daily Camera never published have languished in the newspaper's archives: a pair of reviews by a young would-be film critic named Stephen King.

It was an unsolicited — and notoriously unaccepted — offer to review a film or two a week for Boulder's daily newspaper.

King enclosed critical appraisals of Sam Peckinpah's "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia" ("a merciless dissection of human greed") and Robert Altman's "California Split" ("a stupid gambling picture"), one of which already was screening in Boulder, the other expected shortly.

"I'm offering them for publication, but also as a sort of advertisement," King wrote. "I think the city paper could use occasional movie reviews, both for the amusement of the paper's readers and a thumbnail guide for area moviegoers — not that any of them are obligated to accept what I write, and most won't."

Noting that criticism should have a "local touch" and, above all else, be entertaining, King promised that, if hired, he'd "hope to review lightly, sometimes with my tongue tucked firmly into my cheek, and provide that entertainment."

"I don't want to write snotty avant-garde reviews of obscure foreign films," he continued, "but I would like the chance to shake down what's playing at the Boulder or the Fox or the Basemar Twin Cinemas once or twice a week."

'Succession of stupid movies'

King's review of "Alfredo Garcia" — which runs just over a page, and includes one small, handwritten edit — praises Peckinpah as one of America's great directors, and compliments star Warren Oates.

Stephen King and his son Joe Hill, right, watch the an American League Championship Series game at Boston's Fenway Park in 2007. When Hill was just 2 years old, the King family lived in Boulder, and the future bestselling author offered, unsuccessfully, to write movie reviews for the Daily Camera. (Elise Amendola / Associated Press)

After reeling off the wide variety of violence featured in what's now a cult classic, King observes it all "might have amounted to so much cheap exploitation in the hands of a lesser director, but under Peckinpah's sure hand, 'Alfredo Garcia' becomes a merciless dissection of human greed, a black comedy where Oates ends up stuffing dry ice into the bag which contains Garcia's head and plonking it in his shower to keep it fresh."

The young novelist was less kind to Altman, calling him "a smart director who has made an amazing succession of stupid movies since 'M*A*S*H,' his masterpiece." King didn't like the gambling comedy "California Split," either.

"It would really be more exciting to stay home and get up a penny-ante game of your own," he concluded in his three-paragraph review.

King closed his letter to the Camera with a final plea.

"And by the way," he wrote, "I work cheap."

Newsroom lore

The pitch failed to land.

"He applied and we turned him down," Laurence "Laurie" Paddock, who served as the Camera's editor from 1960 until his retirement in 1992, recalled recently. "We didn't have a job for him."

Looking back on the episode decades later, Paddock conceded it was just as well the newspaper didn't hire the soon-to-be-superstar horror writer.

"He couldn't have gone on like that," Paddock said. "He's a novelist making millions of dollars and he wouldn't have made that as a newspaper reporter. But it would have been nice to have him among our alumni."

King, of course, was far from a household name at the time he lived in Boulder and offered his services to the Camera.

As noted in his letter, King's first published novel, "Carrie," was out in hardback at the time (it wouldn't be a smash until its paperback release in 1975), and a second book — "Jerusalem's Lot," eventually retitled "'Salem's Lot" — was due the following summer.

By the 1980s, with King having become a literary and cinematic celebrity, the newspaper's failure to hire the writer had become newsroom lore.

"The story was well known at the Camera when I got there in '85," said John Lehndorff, who worked as the paper's food editor and columnist until 2000.

Sue Deans, a journalist at the Camera from 1977 to 1987 who returned to serve as the paper's editor for four years beginning in 2003, knows it well.

"I ran across (King's letter) once when I was looking for something in the early '80s," Dean said, recalling a trip to the newsroom library, where old clippings, photographs and other historic material were archived.

"I was looking in some files, and there was this letter from Stephen King, saying he'd like to write reviews for the paper," she said. "What I didn't know was whether it was the same Stephen King who'd gone on to become very famous.

(Attempts to query King through his agent and book publicists, and even directly via Twitter, were unsuccessful.)

'A happy year living on 42nd Street'

King and his family lived in a house on South 42nd Street for about a year, during which time he wrote "The Shining," with its iconic Overlook Hotel famously based on the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park.

"We came very close to living here the rest of our lives rather than going back to Maine," King told the audience at Chautauqua Auditorium during a 2013 event to promote "Doctor Sleep," his sequel to "The Shining."

"... (But) it seemed like there were a lot of people from IBM, and we didn't fit with them; a lot of people from CU, and we didn't fit with them. And a lot of Republicans, and we didn't fit with them."

Boulder would figure into several of King's bestsellers, from "The Shining" and its sequel to the author's post-apocalyptic magnum opus, "The Stand," in which the book's heroes converge under the Flatirons while the forces of evil settle in Las Vegas.

In 1987's "Misery," author Paul Sheldon — played by James Caan in the hit film adaptation — finishes his latest novel, as is his tradition, at the Hotel Boulderado.

"I know the Boulder area, because my wife and family and I spent a happy year living on 42nd Street, in the Table Mesa area," King wrote. "The reason Paul Sheldon chose to finish all his books at the Boulderado is because that's the place I'd go to finish mine, if I were a man in his position (divorced, no kids)... or maybe the Stanley, in Estes Park, although the views from the Stanley are maybe a little too spectacular for complete concentration."

A second stab at 'Alfredo Garcia'

Getting snubbed by the Daily Camera, of course, did absolutely nothing to hinder King's writing career.

He's gone on to pen more than 50 novels spanning genres from horror and fantasy to suspense, mystery and crime fiction — a bibliography boasting collective sales that exceed 300 million.

Additionally, dozens of his books and short stories have made it to the big screen, most notably the acclaimed films "The Shining," "Stand By Me" and "The Shawshank Redemption."

And, almost exactly 35 years after sending his sample review to the Camera, King got his chance to laud "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia" in print.

Article Comments

We reserve the right to remove any comment that violates our ground rules, is spammy, NSFW, defamatory, rude, reckless to the community, etc.

We expect everyone to be respectful of other commenters. It's fine to have differences of opinion, but there's no need to act like a jerk.

Use your own words (don't copy and paste from elsewhere), be honest and don't pretend to be someone (or something) you're not.

Our commenting section is self-policing, so if you see a comment that violates our ground rules, flag it (mouse over to the far right of the commenter's name until you see the flag symbol and click that), then we'll review it.